Greenwich Mean Time
by provocative envy
Summary: IN-PROGRESS: She had then gone straight to muggle London and bought a dress—bright white and backless, the sort of dress one might wear to a society function when one is single and sorry and bitter; the sort of dress designed to stand out and cause a scandal. PP/HP.
1. like a virgin

**Greenwich Mean Time**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**one:**

_like a virgin_

###

Pansy Parkinson is going to wear a white dress to Draco Malfoy's wedding.

She picks out a long, form-fitting satin sheath, side-slit cut right to the middle of her thigh—she likes the way the color contrasts with the tan she'd acquired in Corsica over the winter, likes the way the fabric stretches and shimmers across the gentle slope of her hips, likes the slide of the skinny silk straps against the sensitive skin of her bare shoulders.

She knows that Granger will scowl when she sees her, knows that Draco will sigh and Weasley will grimace and Potter will act affronted by her very existence—but Pansy isn't wearing the dress for any of them.

Oh, no.

Her original dress—which she'd found in Paris after throwing away the bridesmaid color swatches Granger had sent her in what could only have been an utterly unfounded fit of optimism—had been a deep cobalt blue; an exact match for her eyes. It had been reasonably modest and entirely elegant, the sort of dress one might wear to a society function when one was in a long-term, committed, seemingly monogamous relationship with a respectable young man—a young man like Theodore Nott.

And since Pansy had actually _been _in a long-term, committed, seemingly monogamous relationship with Theodore Nott at the time of its purchase, she had thought the dress was a perfectly sensible choice for the Granger-Malfoy wedding—she would look beautiful, she would blend in, and she would make Theo proud.

But then the unthinkable had happened.

Theo had gone to New York for business, run into several old school friends who'd disappeared during the final battle, and proceeded to sleep with Daphne Greengrass.

Pansy could have possibly overlooked this transgression—it wasn't the first, after all—but ten weeks after the fact, there was a plucky, partially-starved barn owl pecking at their dining room window bearing an envelope that contained nothing but a short note and a greyed-out sonogram.

_Twins_, Daphne had written in lurid green ink, _I'm pregnant with twins._

The ensuing argument had been cataclysmic.

Pansy had burned the letter after Theo had left, but not before noticing, somewhat vindictively, that Daphne dotted her i's with tiny, nauseating, curlicue hearts; the original blue dress from Paris had been pitched into the fire less than twenty minutes later.

Almost half a year has passed since then. Pansy likes to believe that she is fine, that she is coping, that she has moved on with grace and dignity and all the other rubbish Granger had so earnestly counselled her with in the aftermath of Theo's betrayal—

Except she hasn't moved on.

She has smoked too many cigarettes and eaten too many éclairs and she is fairly sure that she hasn't consumed a proper vegetable in at least three weeks. She's had more one-night-stands in recent memory than there are days in the month, and she routinely tortures herself by subscribing to the American version of _Witch Weekly _and using thick black markers to erase Daphne's face from all of the Page Six society reports. She has lost weight she didn't need to lose, has traded in her coral pink lipstick for a vampy, striking shade of crimson that attracts men who are anything but respectable—she has been featured in the blind gossip column of the _Daily Prophet _every Sunday without exception, has had the sordid  
>details of her weekend exploits dissected, <em>denounced<em>, has found the attention equal parts shameful and scintillating—

She isn't coping.

She resents Granger and her relationship with Draco more than she will ever feel comfortable admitting, watches them bicker and fight and gaze at each other adoringly when they think no one is looking—and Pansy has not been in love with Draco for ages, has only ever cared for him like a brother since she they were sixteen, but she is _jealous _of what he has with Granger, jealous and spiteful and angry, and she hates that, hates that she is suddenly incapable of being happy for her friends—even the truly annoying ones like Granger.

And in March, when Draco had casually mentioned to her at Saturday brunch that Theo had RSVP'd for the wedding with a plus one, she had rolled her eyes and added a dollop of fresh cream to her tea and dutifully changed the subject. She had then gone straight to muggle London and bought a dress—bright white and backless, the sort of dress one might wear to a society function when one is single and sorry and bitter; the sort of dress designed to stand out and cause a scandal.

Because she is not fine, not really, but she is an excellent liar.

She always has been.

###


	2. truth or dare

**Greenwich Mean Time**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**Author's Note**: So, quick warning that the last half of this chapter is basically just smut. It's character-driven smut, and offers some important insight into how Pansy operates, but it's highly graphic and I don't really skimp on the details, so. If that isn't your thing…I can't help you.

Harry, I also want to point out, is being entirely introduced through a Pansy filter—this story is told in her voice, and her impressions of him are generally exaggerated or misinterpreted altogether. He isn't nice in this chapter. Neither is Pansy, though, so YAY FOR ASSHOLES WHO DESERVE EACH OTHER.

Enjoy!

xoxo

###

**two:**

_truth or dare_

###

_**April 21, 2001**_

_**8:30 pm**_

The wedding is gorgeous.

Of course it is—Granger has impeccable taste.

Pansy sneers at the floral arrangement at the center of her table, a riotous bouquet of sunset-orange Mokara orchids, blooming like rounded pentagrams, and fire-red anthurium, petals veined with a vivid royal violet—it's almost _too _pretty, and if she hadn't seen, firsthand, the five-inch thick vellum notebook that Granger had carried around for eight months, bursting at its leather seams with pamphlets and business cards and grainy sample photographs—Pansy would have assumed that Granger had paid a professional to plan the whole reception.

"Anything I can get you, miss? Champagne? Sparkling water? A cocktail?"

Pansy glances up to see a tuxedoed waiter hovering behind her chair, a black-lacquered tray of champagne flutes balanced precariously on the flat of his forearm; he's blond, bland, and handsome. He's also bizarrely eager to ply her with alcohol—and he looks familiar. She doesn't recognize him.

"Do I know you?" she asks, frowning.

The waiter's smile falters. Across the table, Harry Potter snorts into his plate of salmon pilaf.

"Something to add, Potter?" she coos, glowering at him.

Potter's lips twitch.

"I know that with all the, ah, _socializing_ you do, it might get difficult to keep track of names, faces, prison tattoos, what have you—but _really_, Pansy, surely you can do better than '_do I know you_'," he says, crossing his arms over his chest and slouching in his seat. "I'd be offended if I was him."

She pouts.

"But you're _not _him, Harry," she says sweetly, tilting her head. "I'd lock myself in a convent with a herd of stampeding manticores before my standards ever sank low enough to touch you."

Potter's eyes narrow, gleaming emerald green behind his glasses.

"_Standards_," he repeats. "I don't think that word means what you think it means, Parkinson—otherwise you might not be so quick to claim you have any."

She lifts her chin.

"Says the man who was going to propose to a _Weasley_," she retorts, unable to help herself; her temper, she knows, is her least attractive quality—thank God for push-up bras. "At least I don't take my strays home and try to _marry _them, honestly—"

Potter's expression turns thunderous. The waiter shuffles awkwardly; his cheeks are flushed an embarrassed, rosy pink.

"I have to—I'll just—I'm off at ten, if you're not…busy," the waiter stammers, scratching the back of his neck.

"Sure thing," she simpers, snagging a flute of champagne off his tray before he walks away.

A charged silence descends upon the table.

Pansy takes a leisurely sip of champagne.

Potter cuts into his salmon with a vicious jab of his knife.

The nearby string quartet begins to play a waltz.

"No date, then?" she asks dryly.

He huffs out an unamused laugh, dropping his fork and reaching for his vodka-tonic.

"Nott and Greengrass are here, you know," he replies conversationally, swirling his drink; the cocktail straw bumps against the rapidly melting ice cubes, dragging along the salted rim of the glass. "And, just between us, I was _definitely _on your side when he first cheated on you—privately, at least—but now that I've seen Greengrass up close, I think I might have a new appreciation for where Nott was coming from with all that—I mean, she's not bad-looking, is she? Even though she's pregnant?"

Pansy suppresses a flinch, gulps down the rest of her champagne, and gets to her feet, light-headed and off-balance from the effects of the alcohol.

"Jesus, Potter," she says. "All that pining you're pretending you're not doing for the She-Weasel is making you even more insufferable than usual."

He knocks back his vodka, ostensibly ignoring her.

"Bit of advice, yeah, but if you're about to go after the bartender, I heard he's got a boyfriend in Plymouth—you may have to settle for that waiter. But he's young, I imagine he probably won't mind getting that below average blowie in the pantry you're so famous for—"

She snatches her clutch off the table—a vintage Valentino coin purse, pleated lavender silk with jet black beading along the clasp.

"I'm off, then," she interrupts, flapping her hand in a mocking, half-hearted salute. "Later, Potter—hope your night's shit."

He doesn't respond, and she slips into the crowd on the dance floor, intent on finding an exit.

She desperately needs a cigarette.

###

_**9:40 pm**_

The stars are out as she perches on a rough-hewn stone bench in the shadows of the hotel veranda—stars always remind her of Hogwarts, of nights spent huddled with her telescope at the top of the astronomy tower, mapping constellations and calculating planetary orbits and giggling at Draco's jokes. She had barely paid any attention to Potter and Granger and Weasley during those years, had thought they were little more than loud, obnoxious Gryffindors with odd reputations who couldn't seem to stay out of trouble.

Pansy sometimes wishes that hadn't changed.

She takes a long drag on her cigarette, fills her lungs with smoke and tar and the gritty, sour-sweet taste of tobacco—

Gemini is setting in the west.

And Potter hates her.

Potter hates her, truly, and has never bothered to make a secret of it. She knows that she was the one to advocate handing him over to Voldemort at the end of the war, and she supposes that a certain level of animosity is to be expected after something like that, but—

It _rankles_.

Because she has seen him with Granger and Weasley, has seen how he trusts them and laughs with them and is so _carefree _with his affection; she has seen him gradually warm up to Draco, too, has seen the suspicious glint in his eye dissipate as they all began meeting for weekly dinners in Diagon Alley. And she has seen how Potter can be funny and loyal and _charming_, has seen how he is smarter than Weasley and wisely deferential to Granger, generous with his compliments and his smiles and his money. She has seen him be polite to strangers and kind to small children, has seen him forgive nearly everyone who didn't wind up incarcerated in Azkaban after the war—

Just not her.

She blinks, lashes heavy with mascara, and taps the end of her cigarette.

Leo and Regulus are rising on the southern horizon.

Potter's demeanor is noticeably cold when they interact; _hostile_, really, and while Pansy has been called myriad variations of _slut_ and _bitch _and _traitor _at least once by almost every mainstream media outlet since the fall of Voldemort—it is _worse_, somehow, when it comes from Potter.

She had dismissed the death threats and the poison-laced letters and the damaging rumors about her relationship with Theo. She had used her family's money and her father's attorney and issued a public apology—she had said she had been afraid, which was true, and that she hadn't understood the enormity of her actions until it was too late, which wasn't. Because she wasn't sorry about what she'd done to Potter. She would do it again if she had to, would not hesitate to put an _end _to the prison that her life had become.

And when she's at her most melancholy, when she's drinking forty year Scotch straight out of the cut-crystal decanter and staring at the empty space in Theo's old closet—she thinks that Potter must know that. She thinks that Potter must suspect that she does not regret what she did to him, and that he is disgusted by her. Because he is the savior of the wizarding world, the one who had been willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of the greater good, and she is the girl who had just wanted it all to be _over_.

She extinguishes her cigarette on the corner of the bench, flakes of rock quartz glowing silver against the blizzard of burning ash—

Jupiter is bright tonight.

###

_**11:00 pm**_

Pansy is _drunk_.

She leans into the tall, firmly chiseled chest of the waiter whose name she's already forgotten—Ian? Ike? _Iago_?—and she rolls her hips, tequila on her tongue and a smile on her lips, everything warm and sinuous and _blurry_, background music spiraling into a dull crescendo as she feels big hands spread out across her abdomen, inching lower, and more than one pair of eyes lock onto the lazy grind of her body—

"Jesus, Parkinson," Potter mutters harshly, swooping in from out of _nowhere_, really, to yank her off the dance floor and propel her down a cramped corridor next to the bar. She stumbles over her heels, clinging to his upper arm—and _oh_, Potter is hiding _muscles _underneath those awful crocheted jumpers he's always wearing—

He shoves her into a bathroom and slams the door shut behind them.

"What the _hell _do you think you're doing?" he demands.

She arches a perfectly plucked eyebrow and collapses against the far wall, smoothing her hands down the rumpled front of her dress; her pearl pink manicure, she notes happily, is still immaculate.

"Dancing?" she answers, biting down on her lip to contain what she is _mostly_ certain is an ill-advised bout of inappropriate laughter—he just looks so _angry_, so _irritated_, and there is something about Potter in a rage that she has always found funny. She concludes that it must be the hair; it's a bird's nest on the best of days, but after she's had eight shots of tequila, it rather starts to resemble her old housekeeper's herb garden that time the neighbor's kneazle had gotten out.

"That wasn't _dancing_," he says, brushing her response off with an unfocused glare. She wonders, abruptly, how much he's had to drink. More than her? Less? Did it matter? "That was—sex without the technicalities."

She giggles—or snorts, she can't rightly tell at this point—and maneuvers around him so that she can squint at her reflection in the gigantic, bronze-framed mirror hanging above the sink.

"The _technicalities_?" she echoes, inspecting the artfully smudged line of kohl drawn along her eyelid. "God, Potter, you really know how to talk dirty to a girl, don't you?"

He clenches his jaw, posture stiff in his neatly tailored, dove-grey suit—his shoulders are _distressingly _broad, and a single wilting yellow carnation is tucked next to his ivory pocket square. She wants to ask him who had put it there. A flirtatious waitress? A weepy, grossly nostalgic Granger? The She-Weasel, perhaps? Was the She-Weasel even in attendance? There had been a marked lack of tacky red hair at the ceremony earlier—

"I swear to God, Parkinson, you—" He breaks off, glancing at the exposed skin of her back, forehead creased in a frustrated frown, and then he continues in a lower voice, "You know quite well what you were doing out there. And I won't let you do this to Hermione. Not today."

She dabs at her mouth with the tip of her ring finger, lipstick a glossy, dramatic burgundy that she'd specifically chosen to set off the shards of blue in her eyes—and she notices his gaze track the movement, his pupils dark and dilated, and she wants to laugh at that, wants to take advantage of him and taunt him about it and fucking _revel _in this microscopic crack in his composure—

She hiccups.

Her mouth floods with the taste of lime and salt and the sweat she'd licked off of the nameless waiter's navel at the bar.

"And what does me dancing have to do with Granger?" she asks with clumsily feigned innocence—because she is aware of who she is, after all, is aware of _precisely_ what it is that people have not-so-discreetly been saying about her since Theo had left for America; Potter, though, tends not to prevaricate. Sometimes she likes that about him.

"Quit it," he snaps, combing a hand through his hair; his bowtie is hanging loose around his neck, a splattered stain of something syrupy marring the starched cuff of his collar. "I put up with Malfoy's stupid little Slytherin games because he makes Hermione happy—God knows how—but I don't have to extend the same courtesy to _you_."

She smirks, toying with the three-quarter carat diamond studs in her ears. His eyes flash, and his hands bunch into fists, and she has the wild, slightly fuzzy realization that he is—not entirely unattractive.

God, how _ludicrous_.

"Oh, I don't know, Potter," she replies, running her tongue over the cushion of her lip, inwardly flustered but unwilling to show weakness. "I imagine I could make you _just_ as happy as Draco makes Granger—and in much the same fashion, too."

He grits his teeth.

"No, thanks," he replies coolly, "I didn't bring any disinfectant with me."

"And they say that chivalry is dead," she drawls, deliberately tracing the border of her dress's plunging neckline, fingernail catching on the fabric around her breasts.

He audibly swallows.

"Self-preservation, more like," he retorts, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and shaking his head. "If I'm going to go where the dirtier half of London's already been, I'd prefer not to catch anything on my way out."

She scoffs.

"Aw, keeping tabs on me, Potter?" she asks, swaying unsteadily as she saunters to the door—but her heels are too high, her center of gravity too out of sorts, and she lists to the side, tripping over the hem of her dress—

He grabs her elbow, palm callused and warm and _rough_ against her arm, and stops her from falling. His chest grazes the back of her shoulder. She has never been so close to him before. And she doesn't—and she _can't_—

He doesn't let her go.

"Don't go back out there, Pansy," he says, breath moist against her neck. "Hermione deserves for today to be about _her_, not you and whatever bloody third-string quidditch player you're trying to shag in the coat closet."

She inhales sharply; he smells like vodka and spearmint and sandalwood, and she isn't sure which scent is more intoxicating—but she's dizzy with it, whatever it is, and she registers her heartbeat skipping faster as his grip tightens around her arm.

"I don't shag quidditch players," she replies, quiet and tense. "They have terrible stamina."

She hears his shirttails rustle as he shrugs off his jacket.

"Don't think you had that rule at Hogwarts," he muses, brushing a fingertip down the notches of her spine.

She considers turning around, if only to startle him, but—

The air around them feels swollen with possibilities, with all the potential for chaos, and her brain is drowning in tequila, mental circuits shorting with a fizzle and a pop and an electric hum of static and white noise—she can't process what she suspects is about to happen, can't wrap her mind around six months of bad decisions culminating in such _spectacular _disaster—and with _Potter_, Harry Potter, because he _loathes_ her and she detests him and she likes sex, she does, it's easy and it's distracting and it's _fun_, but Potter—_Harry Potter_, God—he isn't easy and he isn't fun and he will _ruin_ this for her, she can already tell, and she will regret him, she will regret this, and she will buckle under the weight of his disdain and she will _survive_, yes, she will always survive, but that doesn't mean that it won't _hurt_.

This is a bad idea.

She doesn't leave.

"What are you doing?" she asks, frozen and hesitant and _lost_. "I said I would never touch you, didn't I? Was I somehow _unclear_?"

His hands are gliding over the straps of her dress, avoiding her skin, fluttering around her waist and her ribs and her hips, not making contact but _so close_, too close, and she has never—not _Potter_—

"You said you'd lock yourself in a convent with a herd of stampeding manticores before touching me, yes," he confirms, and the confidence in his voice, the catch of his knuckle on the satin seam underscoring the curve of her breasts, it _confuses _her, liquefies the muscles in her abdomen and causes an inescapable tremor of _want _to rock the foundations of her denial.

"And so I'll ask you again—_what _are you doing?" she manages to croak.

He spins her around slowly, gently, as if to emphasize the fact that he is not forcing her to move—and his face, when she finally sees him, is almost scarily unfamiliar, his lips parted and slick, his eyes a brilliant searing green, intent and heavy-lidded and _calculating_, and his palm settles on the small of her back, anchoring her, and she doesn't _understand_, she can't—she doesn't—it's _Potter_, for fuck's sake—

"I don't see any manticores here, Pansy," he murmurs, tone challenging, fingers drumming a tenuous, arrhythmic pattern against the cleft of her backside, right where the lining of her dress cuts off. "Do you?"

She pauses.

"No," she whispers.

He grins, and it isn't nice or comforting or even particularly _happy_.

And then he's kissing her, and she—

She hadn't been expecting that.

His lips rove and snap and tug at hers, hard and unforgiving and with an undercurrent of aggression that should not astonish her as much as it does—and he tastes _bitter_, tangy, like alcohol and self-destruction, and his tongue sweeps through her mouth like it's on a mission, curls around her teeth and licks at her soft palate, tickling, _tingling_, and none of this should be appealing, none of this should be _arousing_, but she's kissing _Harry fucking Potter_, she's got her nails in his hair and his hand jammed down the back of her dress, kneading her arse and yanking her hips closer to his, and he's groaning, broken and low, and it's reverberating through her chest as his fingers delve deeper, arching around the underside of her knickers, scraping at the lace and eliciting a semi-embarrassing keen from the top of her throat—

"_Fuck_, Parkinson," he says, guttural and fierce, and there's something unsettling about the way he's saying her name, a jarring rendition of the syllables that makes her shiver and makes her _stop_ and she's pulling away, less than a fraction of an inch, until she sees that his glasses are askew and his lips are bruised and his eyes are glazed and he is _identical_ to a hundred other boys that she's seen in exactly the same state, he is not different, he is not special, and her stomach drops and her pulse slows down and the disappointment is _paralyzing_, truly, but there is a cold-hot shockwave coiling down her spine as he pushes his thumb into her clit and she decides that she doesn't care, she's done this a thousand times and she'll do it a thousand more and then he's latching onto her collarbone, teeth digging into her skin as if he wants to leave a mark, and that—

"No," she says, voice crumbling under the pressure of his mouth. "Don't—no marks."

His fingertips are dipping inside of her, teasing, dragging, and he flicks his wrist, changing the angle, and she gasps, the muscles in her neck going lax, head lolling back, and he chuckles, incisors playfully pinching at the wing of her clavicle.

"Really? No souvenirs?" he asks, tugging her dress up, bunching the skirt around her waist, guiding her to the granite counter.

She has a lie to employ for this exact scenario, an awful exaggeration about allergies and cosmetics and her delicate, porcelain-soft complexion—but he's spreading her thighs, dropping to his knees, nibbling at the spot above her knee and twisting the front of her knickers around and around, lace tearing and elastic stretching, harder and harder and harder until they just—

_Rip._

"I don't…I don't like them," she says honestly, gripping the edge of the counter as he noses at the line of her pelvis. "Marks. Bruises. I don't like—seeing them. The next day."

And he freezes for a moment—half a moment, fuck, _less_ than that, really—and he looks up at her from between her legs, as if he's _searching_ for something, brow furrowed and breath ragged, _hot_, as it gusts out against her inner thighs, and she wonders absently, hazily, about what he thinks he knows about her now, what he thinks he heard and what he thinks she meant—

But then he shifts, shuts down, and he's holding her gaze and his lip is curling up at the corner and his tongue is swirling a slow, agonizingly light circle around her clit, a threat and a promise and this is _new_, it has never been like this, and she shudders and she pants out a garbled mess of words that might be his name and a plea and she was right, she was right, he is _ruining _this—and he's devouring her, truly, his mouth wide open and his tongue darting in and around and his teeth graze her clit and his fingers are fucking inside of her and she is trembling and she is frantic and she feels the first stirrings of an orgasm swelling and sweltering and she was _wrong,_ she was wrong, she can't survive this, no, and then he makes a sound, a low-pitched groan that buzzes and vibrates through her skin and she is flying and she is breaking and she is _wrecked_—

"—fuck, that was—can I just—" he's saying when she floats back to reality, his hands scrabbling at his belt, shoving his trousers down to his knees, cock a thick, rigid line behind the cotton of his boxers. "_Pansy_, please—"

He wants to fuck her.

She stares.

Harry Potter wants to fuck her.

"Yeah," she says, bemused and curious and maybe, she reasons quickly, maybe it's the tequila, maybe it's the lingering strain of her orgasm pulsing deep and deeper in her abdomen—maybe, _maybe_, and she pulls on the front of his shirt, dragging him into another kiss—

His chin is sticky.

He tastes like her.

A thrill of anticipation shoots through her gut.

And then the fat, flared head of his cock is bumping against her clit, slipping and nudging and she feels the muscles in his shoulders ripple as he holds himself back.

She scoots forward on the counter.

She wraps her legs around his waist.

She crosses her ankles and she lifts her hips and his cock slides inside—

He goes slow. He stops kissing her. He breathes into her mouth, eyes closed and face tense, and she savors the lack of friction, the stillness, the overwhelming sensation of being full and filled and _fraught_—

"_Fuck_," he grits out hoarsely, and she _consumes_ the word, lets it soak into the pad of her tongue in flavors of tart and tarnished, and she digs the spikes of her stilettos into the meat of his back and swivels her hips, urging him to move, and he says, "I'm not—not going to last—"

And then he's rocking into her, pulling and pushing and pounding, and the slap of their skin is wet, arresting and filthy, _abrasive_ in the quiet of the bathroom, and he has one hand on her hip, squeezing roughly, and another resting above her cunt, fingers framing the nub of her clit as he watches, seemingly entranced, as his cock moves in and out, pelvis slamming into the cradle of her thighs, and there's still some small part of her that is trying to rationalize what's happening and justify her decision to fuck _Potter_, of all people, but that thought is distant and dim and he feels too _good _and she isn't going to come again, no, but that doesn't matter and she doesn't care and—

He comes with a stutter of his hips and a hiss between his teeth.

"Sh-shit," he gasps, slumping forward, the outer rim of his glasses digging into her arm. He holds onto her hips for another few seconds, and she thinks she feels his hands press harder against her skin, briefly, almost unnoticeably—

He clears his throat.

He steps back.

The air goes cold—

And the door flies open.

The flash of a camera illuminates the space between them, highlighting Potter's hand on the zipper of his trousers and the swath of white fabric stretched out across her naked thighs—

She shields her eyes.

The photographer dashes off.

Neither of them move.

"Shit," she says, strangely detached from the panic that she's _intellectually_ aware she should be feeling."That's going to be—everywhere."

Potter is gaping at her, at the tattered lace of her knickers still balled up on the floor. His expression is blank.

"_Fuck_," he blurts out, nonplussed.

She slides off the counter, heels clacking loudly on the marble tile; her legs are wobbly, and there is a faint sheen of sweat pooling between her collarbones.

"Yeah," she agrees. She's dazed. She's _numb_. "Fuck."

###


	3. disassembly required

**Greenwich Mean Time**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**three:**

_disassembly required_

###

_**April 22, 2001**_

_**11:00 am**_

Pansy wakes up alone.

She rubs the apple of her cheek into her gold-tinted, Egyptian linen pillowcase. Her sheets are cool against her bare calves, sleek and smooth and sensuous, and her Slytherin quidditch jersey is rucked up around her waist, threadbare cotton soft in her palms as she tugs it back down. Her hair is loose around her shoulders. Her breath is stale. She wants a cigarette, and maybe a glass of grapefruit juice, but—she's comfortable. Languid.

She yawns.

She rolls over, limbs sprawled out, and wipes at the bits of clumped-up, day-old mascara accumulating in the corners of her eyes. She can hear the grandfather clock in the hallway ticking like a metronome, ominous and slightly grating, and the faint roar of London traffic as engines sputter and brakes squeal. Her bedroom is dark, mint green walls shrouded in grey-black shadows, and her ivory jacquard curtains are knotted shut, a thin sliver of sunlight peeking in from behind. She can see what looks like the outline of a bra hanging from the drunkenly tilted shade of a nearby standing lamp.

She squints at the ceiling.

She massages the underside of her jaw.

She has a headache.

Her arm flops to the left, boneless and limp, and she rummages around the surface of her bedside table for a bottle of aspirin. She unscrews the lid. She shakes out three pills. She swallows them dry.

She _really _wants a cigarette.

A loud knock sounds from downstairs, followed almost immediately by the repeated, incessant ringing of her doorbell.

She winces.

She seriously considers ignoring whoever's there—after all, Draco and Granger had left for France the previous evening, and, outside of them, she has very few remaining friends—

"_Parkinson_!" a male voice yells in between knocks. "We need to talk!"

She bolts upright.

Why would _Potter _be—

She remembers.

She remembers.

She remembers, and her stomach lurches.

"Just a minute!" she calls out. She looks down at her legs. Her shirt is gigantic, falling a few inches past her thighs as she stands up, and her feet are encased in a pair of chunky, grey wool crew socks. She searches fruitlessly for a headband on her way out of the room, fingers catching in the tangled ends of hair. She shrugs. At least she's wearing knickers.

The knocking intensifies when she starts down the stairs.

"Parkinson!" Potter shouts. "Open the bloody door or I swear to God I'll—"

She purposely drags her steps; Gryffindors were always so needlessly _dramatic_.

"—get a warrant and break the fucking locks myself—"

She rolls her eyes.

She heaves open the door.

Sunlight streams onto the imported Brazilian rosewood floor of the foyer.

"What?" she snaps, glaring at Potter; he's pale, hastily dressed, jeans baggy and t-shirt wrinkled. "I'll hex you from here to bloody _Cornwall_ if you don't have a good reason for getting me out of bed before noon on a Sunday. You didn't even bring _pastries_."

He appears startled for a brief moment, brilliant green eyes wide behind his glasses.

"You didn't—you didn't get one?" he asks, voice cracking.

Her irritation sharpens.

"Get one of _what_?"

He scratches the back of his neck, glancing furtively around the street.

"Look, can we just…" he trails off.

"Oh, my _God_, spit it _out_," she interrupts, stooping down to pick up the Sunday edition of the _Prophet_; one of Potter's footprints is plastered across the front page, wet and weirdly muddy, rendering the headline illegible. "Is this about the photo? Which page is it on? Is it bad? Is there cellulite?"

She flips through the dry pages, newspaper rustling. There's an editorial spread on the Granger-Malfoy wedding, a trio of tasteful headshots depicting key points of the ceremony itself—Granger arriving at the end of the aisle, nervously biting her lip and smiling shyly, Chantilly lace veil pushed back; Draco's face upon seeing her for the first time in almost twenty-four hours, ever-present smirk softening into something small and private, so different from the smug grin he'd worn earlier in the day; a final, candid shot of the two of them in profile, foreheads pressed together, Granger's nose wrinkled as she tries not to laugh, white sugared icing smeared across their chins and Draco's hands cupping her jaw.

They look so _happy_.

And she knows that they deserve it, truly, and she knows that they struggled in the beginning, knows that their entire relationship had begun while Draco was still in Azkaban and Granger was still with Weasley and that none of it had been _easy_, no, but—

It isn't _fair_.

Draco had gotten Albus Dumbledore killed. Draco had _lived _with fucking Voldemort. Draco had taken a Dark Mark and Draco had actively fought against Potter and Draco had run away before the final battle was even _done_. Yet Draco's sins had been all but washed away as soon as Granger had signed her Azkaban visitor's badge.

Pansy's heart twists.

She never feels more like the traitor everyone believes her to be until she thinks about Granger and Draco and realizes how much she wants to blame them for everything that's gone wrong.

She looks back at the _Prophet_.

Directly below the wedding spread, there's a small picture of Theo and Daphne Greengrass; his jacket's unbuttoned, and he's sipping from a tumbler of whiskey, cheeks flushed and teeth gleaming. Daphne is heavily pregnant in an eggplant purple dress with thick straps and an empire waist. Her arm is looped around Theo's waist, face tilted up as she whispers in his ear. Their body language is comfortable. They look—content.

Pansy's mouth floods with something sour.

"—not _there_," Potter's saying, anxiously twining a loose thread from the bottom of his t-shirt around his index finger—he can't possibly have any blood circulating, not with his skin so pinched and white along the edges—

"What?" she asks, belatedly.

Potter seems agitated, and she watches as the thread—navy or black, she can't quite tell—burrows even deeper into the fleshy pad of his finger.

"Are you listening to me?"

She cocks her head to the side. The seam sewn around the hem of his shirt is dimpling, fabric turning lumpy and uneven—

"No," she answers honestly, "not really. Are you saying anything interesting?"

His chin falls forward onto his chest and the thread around his finger loosens, sluggishly unwinding as it flutters away.

"Christ," he mutters, motioning tiredly to the entry hall behind her. "Let me in, yeah? I have to show you something, and as sure as I am that your neighbors are used to seeing strange men _leaving _your flat at all hours of the morning, they might get curious about one of us _arriving _without the benefit of a post-shag walk of shame."

She sighs, headache returning, and steps aside. She doesn't bother to mention that she has never taken anyone home before—he won't care, and she can do without the inevitable joke he'd make about seedy motel rooms and back alley blow jobs. Potter isn't half as clever as he thinks he is.

"What's this about?" she asks, kicking the front door shut.

His posture is stiff when he turns to look at her again.

"Not quite what I was expecting," he says, nodding jerkily at her shirt.

Her eyes narrow at the awkward change of subject.

"Oh? What were you expecting, then? A satin corset and crotchless knickers?"

He sneers.

"Considering your reaction to Ginny rejecting my proposal was to point out that you spent more on lingerie in a _month_ than I had spent on all the diamonds in her ring…yeah, I was expecting a bit more out of your sleeping attire, Parkinson."

"Think about my _sleeping attire _often, do you?" she coos.

She relishes the stain of red that splashes across his face, vivid and stark.

"Whose jersey is that, anyway? Malfoy's?" he demands.

She snorts.

"Marcus Flint's, not that it's any of your business," she responds curtly. "But what are you doing here, Potter? How do you even know where I live?"

He scrubs his hand down the scruff of his jaw.

"Shagged him, too?" he deflects.

Abruptly, she needs a cigarette; she reaches around him for the pack she keeps in the antique Georgian chesterfield, hand-rolled with a custom blend of tobacco and lavender.

"What does it matter if I have?" she asks, tapping out a floral-scented cigarette with an exasperated snap of her wrist—because she's never shagged Marcus, will likely never have the opportunity to now that he's shacked up with Zabini in Notting Hill, but Potter's infuriating assumptions about her sexual history are _needling _in the worst way.

"It doesn't," Potter insists, directing a petulant scowl at her knees. One of her socks has drooped down her leg, bunched up like an accordion around the fine bones of her ankle. She feels oddly vulnerable under the force of his gaze. She hates it.

"Don't think I didn't notice you avoided explaining how you managed to find my flat," she says, striking a match within the cocoon of her hands and lighting up her cigarette. "Which is, admittedly, much less relevant than _what you're doing here in the first place._"

His lips tighten as he watches her take a drag, smoke curling out in a white-grey cloud and filling the space between them with subtle notes of anise and licorice, dandelion and chocolate, bitter and sweet and intoxicating.

"Someone took a picture of us last night," he eventually says, reaching into the pocket of his trousers and pulling out a crumpled, industrial yellow envelope. "Which you know. You were there. You saw them do it. And I thought—I was anticipating that picture being plastered across the front page of the _Prophet _this morning, but it wasn't. Instead, I had this parcel waiting at my garden window when I went down for tea."

Curious, she puts out her cigarette in a porcelain ashtray and, with a skeptical quirk of her eyebrows, takes the envelope from him. Inside, there is a single glossy photograph and a plain sheet of parchment. She flounces through the mahogany archway that leads to her kitchen, stopping at her breakfast table, and lays the contents of the envelope flat, eyes instantly straying to the photograph.

And the picture is—

Well, it's worse than she thought it'd be.

Her knickers are an obvious bundle of skimpy black lace in the foreground, forgotten on the floor, and Potter is standing damnably close to her, her legs still spread and her dress still up. His body is turned the slightest bit towards the camera, stance defensive, _possessive_, the ninety-degree bend in his elbow shielding her naked thighs from the frame—and his trousers are clearly undone, his belt buckle resting loose against his front pocket. There is something unfailingly _intimate_ about their position, their expressions—kiss-stung lips and heavy-lidded eyes—about the slope of her arm as she holds onto his shoulder, the point of her heel pressed into the dip of his lower back.

They look like they're—

She swallows, wishing she still had her cigarette.

She then resolutely turns her attention to the parchment. The letter itself is short, only a few sentences typed out in a bold-faced font:

_Mr. Potter_—

_I will require £50,000 to keep the enclosed photograph private. Contacting the authorities will result in immediate publication. Leave the required sum in the form of an unmarked cashier's cheque in the napkin dispenser of the second window-facing table from the right at Florean Fortescue's Diagon Alley location. You have 72 hours._

It's unsigned.

"Well?" Potter asks as she finishes reading. He's fidgeting.

She turns the picture over. She doesn't want to look at it anymore.

"_Well_," she says tartly, moving towards the kitchen, "there isn't any cellulite."

Several seconds of stunned silence pass.

"You can't be—God, you're _serious_, aren't you?"

She pulls down a powder blue coffee mug from the cabinet above the sink.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Potter," she replies, filling the mug with tap water. She isn't thirsty, not really, but she can't stay still. "You're being blackmailed. It all seems fairly straightforward."

"Only a bloody Slytherin would think that _blackmail_ is straightforward," he mutters under his breath.

She crosses her ankles and clutches her mug in both hands.

"It _is_ straightforward," she says bluntly. "See—one party acquires leverage over another party and chooses to exploit that leverage by demanding a time-sensitive transference of money, goods, or services. It's hardly a complicated arrangement."

His lip curls.

"Yeah, thanks for that, but I happen to understand how blackmail works."

She hums, off-key and thoughtful.

"Then _why are you here_?" she asks with deliberate enunciation.

He stares at her, expression torn between bewilderment and annoyance.

"Because I don't want that picture to get out?" he answers, tone lilting and sarcastic. "Because I assumed that you were _also _being blackmailed and figured it might be a _good idea_ to find out what you wanted to do about it?"

"Except I'm _not _being blackmailed," she says. "And even if I was—I wouldn't _do _anything about it. Who cares if this picture gets published? As subpar as the sex was, it's not like I haven't been previously caught in _far_ more compromising positions. This is…_tame_, rather."

He snorts derisively.

"_Subpar_," he says, stalking over to the kitchen island and swiping an impatient hand through his hair. "_Really_."

She takes a nonchalant sip of water.

"_That's _what you'd like to focus on?" she taunts. "_Really_."

He props his elbows on the counter and leans forward, into her personal space. She looks away from the play of muscles in his forearms, corded and wiry and unquestionably strong. He isn't much taller than her—a few inches, at most—but there's a _solidness _to his body that she likes; she feels delicate in comparison, safe and soft and protected. She shifts uncomfortably at the thought.

"_Regardless_," he grits out, flicking his eyes away from hers. "I don't want this picture getting out—unlike _you_, I'm not too keen on having my private life put on display for the whole of wizarding London."

She arches an eyebrow.

"_Oh_," she says dryly. "And is that why you did an interview with Colin Creevey last August where all you did was gush about how _in love_ you were with the She-Weasel?"

"Don't _call_ her—that was a favor," he replies, jaw clenched. "His magazine's a start-up, you know that. And he needed the exposure. That isn't—_this_ isn't like that, anyway. This is…what we…it's very out of character for me. It'll be talked about. For awhile. I don't—I don't want the scrutiny. Especially after—Ginny."

Her mug clatters as she plops it on the counter.

"Out of character," she repeats, disbelievingly. "Mm, yes, because all you do-good Gryffindor types are impervious to my wiles."

He rocks back on his heels, incredulous.

"You think this is about my _ego_," he says. "You think this is about—embarrassment?"

"I don't know," she admits, careful to keep her voice even. "But I'm really failing to see how this photograph could possibly be worth fifty thousand quid to you. Who cares if we shagged? We're adults. Neither of us are in relationships—it isn't as if it's really that outrageous."

His mouth turns down at the corners.

"Pansy," he says, slow and dangerous, "why did you sleep with me last night?"

She drums her nails against the granite, fighting the urge to pick up the black, cat-shaped ceramic salt shaker sitting next to her toaster. It had been a gag gift from Draco after Theo had officially moved out; _if you're going to wind up alone with forty cats, you might want to get a head start_, Draco had said with his customary tactlessness. She had slapped him. He had let her. A matching tea towel had shown up the very next weekend.

"Tequila," she tells Potter flatly. "Proximity. A heretofore undiagnosed brain injury. Take your pick."

"No," he argues, "those were all contributing factors, but they weren't the _reason_."

She scoffs, reaching up to comb her fingers through her disheveled hair, separating it into three roughly even sections.

"Oh?" she asks scathingly. "_Do _enlighten me, Potter—I had no idea you were such an expert on my thoughts and feelings."

He watches as she begins to braid her hair; his expression is difficult to decipher, and she's irrationally bothered by that.

"You knew you were causing a scene at Hermione's wedding," he says. "You knew that if you went back out there without me, you'd find that waiter, probably just to spite me, and you'd do something that would take attention away from Hermione. You shagged me because you didn't trust yourself enough not to ruin her night."

She methodically yanks at a stray strand of hair, coiling it around the end of the braid to keep it in place.

"You're grasping," she snarls.

"No, I'm not," he insists. "You're selfish, but you saw how much she put into that wedding—"

"_Still grasping_," she interjects loudly. "Why do you think I require a _reason _to sleep with anyone? God, it's just _sex_, it isn't as if we have to talk about it, or do it again, or—"

"We _could_ have not had to talk about it," he says, anger creeping into his voice, "if I wasn't currently _being blackmailed _with—"

"Which doesn't have a thing to do with these mysterious _motives_ I must have had for fucking you," she retorts, talking over him. "_Christ_, Potter, the picture isn't even _explicit_, what does it _matter_ if it gets out—"

"What does it—you think I want the whole bloody world to know about—about what I did with _you_? Of all people?"

Her mouth snaps shut.

She registers rage and shame and blistering humiliation simmering slow and molten beneath the surface of her skin—and this, _this_, this is why she despises Potter, this is why she avoids him at parties and doesn't make eye contact at Friday dinners and pretends he is not _there _the great majority of the time—

No one has the power to make her feel quite as small and insignificant as Potter does. She has never wanted to examine that fact too closely, and she doesn't want to now, either, doesn't want to delve any farther than she has to into this particular rabbit hole—

But she can still recall the burning sting of Theo's parting words after the breakup—_not worth the effort, Pansy, you're a fucking disaster_—and the stagnant, booming echo of the front door as it slammed and rattled and shook the house. She can recall the stale, lukewarm mess of an uneaten dinner—roast pheasant with a port wine reduction and rosemary mashed potatoes—and the chip in her thumbnail from where she'd grabbed onto the cast-iron fire poker too quickly.

They're awful memories, sharply etched and deeply defined; and yet she is secretly so very _proud _of them, of what they represent, can sort through the rubble of her relationship with Theo and recognize the moment when she had had _enough_, when she had demanded more from him and refused to compromise and _finally_ regretted allowing him to think that he had won for so long, for _too _long—

They're awful memories, yes, but they're _hers_; she failed everyone but herself, and she wonders if there isn't something wrong with her, truly, because she _prefers _it like that.

And Potter—Potter's condescending glances and harsh laughter and snide commentary—it cuts in a way that Theo's absence never has. It's potent. It's suffocating. It chips at her resolve, causes her to question and stammer and _stall_, and she isn't that girl, she _isn't_, she isn't the girl who cowers and she isn't the girl who cries and she isn't the girl who stays quiet until she _can't_, no—

She clears her throat.

"Thought you weren't embarrassed," she says, tone brittle.

The skin between his eyebrows furrows in a frown.

He moves closer, though, circles around the side of the island to stand directly next to her, hip to hip. She turns away, angling her body so that their elbows are touching but she doesn't have to see his face when he says—

"It isn't...I didn't mean…I was planning a trip to Italy, to see Ginny," he says, voice oddly muted in the heavy, oppressive silence of the kitchen. It isn't an apology, and it isn't quite an explanation, but she hadn't been expecting either. Not really.

"So you want the She-Weasel to assume you've been living like a monk since she fucked off to the Continent? _Really,_ Potter? Isn't she dating Viktor Krum now?"

He twitches, hunching forward slightly, and she feels the scratching drag of his jeans as his ankle brushes hers. The digital clock on her stove reads 11:37. She trains her gaze on the blinding green break between the top and bottom halves of the 7—she can't fathom the point of it.

"Yeah," he says noncommittally, "she is. But—either way, I'm guessing that, ah, shagging you in the bathroom at Hermione's wedding isn't going to impress her."

Pansy's nostrils flare.

"Well, look on the bright side, Potter," she drawls, tamping down the confusing miasma of emotions that she's positive she doesn't want to apply any labels to; still, she recognizes resentment and she recognizes jealousy and she recognizes _fear_, too, which—_fuck_, she needs another cigarette. She pauses. She forces herself to say, "At least you probably didn't get me pregnant."

She smirks grimly as he whips his head around to gape at her.

"What—aren't you...on something? I didn't—I was a little—I was _distracted_, Christ, _you_ are distracting, Parkinson, please tell me you're on—"

She nudges him with her shoulder a bit harder than strictly necessary.

"You know that herd of manticores that was inexplicably absent from the bathroom last night?" she asks, glancing out the bay window above the sink; the glass is clean, pristine, winking with a sheen of rainbow colored prisms as the sun hits it head-on. "Yeah, I'd sooner choose to reproduce with one of _them_ than I would with you, Potter. Quit worrying."

He relaxes, sort of, but remains tense as he mumbles—

"I'm going to pay the blackmailer."

Her spine prickles with awareness as he shifts against her.

"Yeah?" she replies.

"Yeah," he says somberly. "The money isn't an issue, and I—even if I wasn't hoping for—you don't deserve the...it would be bad for you," he finishes, stumbling over the words. "The attention. It would be fifty times worse than anything else you've had to deal with, especially since—well, since it's me, and it's you, and after everything—"

"Ah, yes, the traitor and the savior, working out their issues with _orgasms _while their closest friends get married," she simpers, voice dripping with disdain. "You're being ridiculous, Potter—no one will care. It's a wedding. People get drunk and make bad decisions at weddings. It isn't shameful unless you let it be."

He's quiet for a second, a low, hesitant sound emerging from the back of his throat, aborted and bitten-off.

"It isn't—it isn't just about that," he hedges. "What will Hermione and Malfoy say? You and I...Hermione might think…"

She peers at the small flower box of fresh herbs sprouting on the window sill—there's basil and thyme and oregano, fragrant green leaves with pine-scented stems in loamy brown dirt.

"Hermione is smarter than you and I combined," she says drolly. "Twice over, even. You're dafter than Weasley after a pint of firewhiskey if you think she isn't going to figure out what we did—might as well send her an owl now, actually."

She hears him wipe at his mouth, saliva sticking to his fingertips with a slick, wet slide of lips and skin.

Heat blossoms across her scalp.

"So—what, you just want to ignore all of this until it gets printed it in the _Prophet_?" he asks, frustration evident. "Admit defeat? Not even _try _to keep it hidden?"

She glowers.

"_I'm_ the one admitting defeat?" she demands. "Oh, _honestly_, Potter, _you're_ the one who showed up this morning in a veritable _tizzy_, yeah—you haven't given _any_ of this any real thought, you're just—_reacting_ and impetuously jumping to do this—this _person's_ bidding without any tactical planning whatsoever—"

"I was _not _in a _tizzy_—" he interjects, seething.

"—and you're friends with Colin Creevey, aren't you?" she continues, refusing to acknowledge his outburst. "After that soppy bloody interview you gave him about the She-Weasel, he should owe you at least fifteen favors—so, ask him about the picture, ask him about the paper it was printed on, or—or how it was developed. Ask him if he can tell anything about where it came from or what camera was used or—"

"—the fuck is a _tizzy_—"

"—because you have 72 hours, Potter, and it can't be _too_ terribly difficult to trace the location of a _criminal_ who's stupid enough to blackmail both the Boy Who Lived and, indirectly, a _Parkinson_—"

"—wasn't _overreacting_, alright, there was no _tizzy_—"

"—then you can have him arrested, or set your merry band of Weasleys on him while he sleeps—whatever you like, it's hardly my concern, I just think that you're behaving like an _imbecile_ right now. I mean, God, how do you function without Granger? How are you still _alive _if this is how you approach problem-solving?"

He's gritting his teeth by the time she's done speaking.

"Couldn't have offered up any of those suggestions half a bloody hour ago?" he asks hotly.

She curves her lips into a patronizing smile.

"Your _tizzy _was far too amusing to interrupt," she purrs.

He crosses his arms over his chest and slumps backwards into the island, the broad line of his shoulder grazing her chin as she turns to face him again. He smells like plain white soap and the smoke from her cigarette. She holds her breath.

"Right," he says, eyes darting down and sweeping across her neck and her jaw and her mouth—he's studying her, she suspects, memorizing the imperfections, the dimple puckered in the meat of her right cheek, the cluster of tawny brown freckles above her pulse point, the miniscule, waxy white scar marring the front of her throat, a mostly invisible remnant of the war, a parting gift from the Carrows—

"You should go," she whispers, stepping away. "You should—find Creevey. See if he can help. The letter and the—the picture—they're on the table over there, but I've got—Zabini and I are going shopping, and he gets—he gets whiney if I'm late."

Potter blinks rapidly, as if clearing his vision.

"Er—yeah, alright," he says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. She tries not to notice his fingers, long and slender and graceful, tries not to think about what he _did _to her with them less than a day ago—"You don't want to come? With me, I mean? Not—I didn't—you don't want to _join me_, is what I meant—"

She starts to walk towards the foyer, grimacing as the underwire of her bra pokes into her rib cage.

"No," she replies, motioning for him to follow her. "I already told you, Potter, I don't _care _if this gets out. I'm not even being properly blackmailed. This is your problem, not mine."

She can tell that he wants to protest, but she's already opening the front door, preparing to usher him out—

An industrial yellow envelope, unmarked and unassuming, is resting on her forest green welcome mat.

"Still not your problem?" he asks.

She frowns.

"This doesn't make any sense," she says, inspecting the envelope. It feels just like Potter's, thin and feather-light. "Why would they do this twice? They had to have known that you'd share your letter with me, it's _logical _that you did, and risking two midday deliveries when they don't—"

She breaks off.

She stares at the picture in her hand.

Apprehension settles like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach.

"Parkinson?" Potter asks, tone questioning.

She doesn't answer.

Nausea roils as she reads the attached note, even shorter than Potter's had been:

_Pansy—_

_Let's make this a bit more personal, shall we? Hopefully she doesn't go into labor before you pay your share._

"—what's wrong?" Potter's saying, spinning her around with a firm grip on her shoulder.

She gives him the photograph.

She doesn't need to look at it anymore.

"Shit," he murmurs.

She closes her eyes, but all she sees are Theo and Daphne Greengrass, unconscious and tied up, rope burns on their wrists and duct tape across their mouths, a shiny silver revolver lying next to their hands—

"Give me five minutes to change," she says abruptly. "I'm coming with you to—to Creevey's. Just—five minutes."

"Parkinson, we should contact—"

She spears him with an icy glare.

"_Five minutes_, Potter," she hisses, and she hates that her voice is shaking, hates that he can hear her waver and crack and crumble, but she can't—"Please."

Five minutes. That's all she needs.

He shrugs, but she can see the way his knuckles are white as he holds onto the photograph.

"Five minutes, then," he agrees.

###


	4. the b team

**Greenwich Mean Time**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**Author's Note**: So…originally, this story wasn't supposed to be very long. Maybe 25k-30k words. But then this chapter wrote itself, more or less, and Harry deviated from his character outline quite a bit, and now it's going to take a little longer to get where everyone needs to go. I'm working on a few other things at the moment—including a Dramione fic—which means that updates for this might not be as fast as they have been. I'll try to stay on something vaguely resembling a schedule, but I can't make promises about a timeframe for when to expect the next chapter. Maybe two weeks? Ish?

Either way—the response to this fic has been overwhelmingly warm, and I apologize to those of you who review and are disappointed when I don't reply; I have a really hectic Real Life, and I can't even keep up with my asks on Tumblr. (Although I am more likely to answer you there if you had a question about the fic.) I just want to say that I fully appreciate each and every review you leave, and I'm so happy to hear that my interpretation of Pansy is going over as well as it is. This version of her character is particularly dear to me—I can't wait for you guys to see what I have planned for her.

Enjoy!

xoxo

###

**four:**

_the b team_

###

_**April 22, 2001**_

_**12:10 pm**_

She climbs the stairs with a mounting feeling of dread.

_Five minutes._

She goes through the motions of undressing once she reaches her bedroom—she combs out the messy, unkempt strands of her braid, uses a handful of copper bobby pins to sweep back her fringe, slips a flamingo pink elastic around her hair and twists the mass of it into a sagging topknot; she tugs off her socks and her underwear, flings them in the vague direction of her grey wicker laundry hamper, gets her arms stuck in the sleeves of her shirt before wrestling it onto the carpet; she unhooks the front clasp of her burgundy silk bra with faintly quivering fingers, catches her nail on the tiny satin bow sewn onto the seam between the cups and swears violently as she feels her cuticle tear; her pearl pink manicure, still almost flawless from the wedding, is now damaged. She stares down at her hand, at the chipped sliver of luminescent paint peeling away from her nail.

_Five minutes._

She collapses onto the edge of her bed.

She draws her legs up.

She presses her forehead to her knees.

She tries not to cry, but—

_Five minutes._

Pansy knows that she isn't a good person.

She lies—often, egregiously, with next to no guilt and only the faintest twinge of apprehension that she might get caught. She says mean things about nice people, _thinks_ even meaner things about even nicer people—she isn't gentle and she isn't soft-spoken and she isn't selfless. She cheats at card games and drinking contests and pointless, petty arguments, has no qualms about bending rules and denying facts and manipulating statistics—not because she's particularly competitive, no, but because she likes the idea of being _better_ than everyone else. It isn't about winning, it's about proving herself.

And Pansy _knows _she isn't a good person.

She had never loved Theo.

Not properly.

He had been exactly what she had needed after the war had ended—placid and solid and _understanding_, aware of her faults and unencumbered by what they should have meant to him. He had been her friend, had lived through that last harrowing year at Hogwarts with her; she hadn't ever planned on dating him, not truly, but he had been tall and he had been sweet and in the months following the fall of the Dark Lord, he had been the only person not locked up in Azkaban who hadn't looked at her like she was fragile, or dangerous, or crazy. He hadn't blamed her for what she'd done to Potter, and she had latched on to _that_, to him, had cautiously constructed a careful sort of relationship out of the paltry remaining parts of her that she had still felt safe enough to share.

It had been nice.

It had been _nice_.

It had deteriorated rapidly, of course, as most everything always does in her life, but she had savored it all the same, had luxuriated in the way he had laughed at her jokes, the sound punched out of him in a throaty, helpless huff, as if he had been surprised he could still find anything funny. She had adored the slight gap between his two front teeth, had been diligent about adopting pet names and shrieking them at him in public venues; he had loved her so much in the beginning, so very much—he had been so earnest and affectionate and _patient _with her.

It had taken him awhile to realize that she had already given him everything she had to give; it had taken him _too long_, really, and as usual, as _fucking_ usual, it hadn't been enough.

_She _hadn't been enough.

She blinks as heavy, clunking footsteps sound from the hallway.

_Five minutes._

She scrambles to her feet, unwilling to be caught in such a vulnerable position—

Potter strides into her room, expression irritated, keen green eyes seeking her out as he opens his mouth to berate her, undoubtedly.

He blanches.

He spins around.

The back of his neck is a brilliant, fiery red, and it takes her a moment to remember that she's naked.

She smirks.

"You—why aren't you—your bloody _door _is open!" he says, overloud and outraged.

She snorts.

"You can turn around, you know," she drawls. "You've already had your tongue in the really _important_ bits—all very up close and personal, Potter—so maybe now's not the time to get squeamish."

"Don't—why d'you have to _say _it like that?" he demands, posture rigid.

She wipes at the tear tracks on her cheeks, rubbing them into her face; her lashes are clumped together and wet, spiky at the tips, and her eyes are likely bloodshot. She's glad that Potter didn't get a good look at her.

"Say it like what?" she asks, lilting and innocent. "Your tongue _was _inside of me last night—quite _dexterously_, too—so it isn't really an arguable—"

"Oh, my _God_," he groans, frustration evident. She watches, bemused, as the muscles in his shoulders ripple beneath the thin cotton of his t-shirt. "Just—stop. Christ. I get it, you're shameless, just—_stop_."

She grits her teeth, strangely stung by his comment, and an awkward silence descends, harsh and impassive. She fidgets, catching sight of a flimsy lavender robe hanging from a platinum hook on her bathroom door. She doesn't reach for it. She's being petty, she knows she is, but Potter has an uncanny talent for flinging offhand insults at her that feel an awful lot like accusations—and shameless is as shameless does, she thinks with a brittle twist of her lips.

"You're a bit of a prude, aren't you?" she sneers, stomping towards her wardrobe and pausing in front of the mirror; she gives herself a cursory once-over, takes in finger-shaped bruises on her hips, a stark, dusky violet against the white of her skin, as well as a faint pink flush spreading across her chest, right above the rounded swells of her breasts.

"No," Potter snaps, shifting uneasily. "I just don't need to hear you be so—_blunt _about what we—what I—what happened at the wedding."

She pouts at her reflection before opening a drawer and pulling out a pair of skimpy black knickers; she unearths a bra, a size too small and canary yellow cotton, and dimly registers that it must be Granger's, left behind after a recent night out. Pansy shrugs and puts it on anyway, immediately wincing as the straps dig in to her shoulders.

"_What happened at the wedding_," she repeats in a flat, disbelieving monotone. "Jesus, Potter, you're fucking hopeless."

She hears him turn around again, slowly, as if checking to make sure she's decent.

"What does that mean?" he retorts, a wary edge to his voice.

She releases a pointed, long-suffering sigh, teal linen camisole bunched like a scarf around her neck.

"It's like McGonagall said in that awful anatomy class they made us all suffer through in third year—if you can't even bring yourself to _say_ it, are you really mature enough to be _doing it_—"

He cuts her off with an astoundingly hostile bark of laughter.

"Ah, right," he scoffs, scratching at his chin; his gaze is pinned to her thighs, and something about the weight of it makes her wish that she'd gotten dressed faster. "_Maturity_. Is that what we're calling it?"

Her toes curl into the carpet, tiny, delicate bones creaking at the jerkiness of the movement. A white eyelet lace skirt is pooled at her feet, just waiting to be stepped into and zipped up.

"I don't know, Potter," she simpers, deceptively benign. "Is it?"

He saunters over to her, gait uncharacteristically stiff.

"You're fucking with me," he states, pointblank. "You're _always_ fucking with me."

She offers him a smug smile, but she doesn't mean it. She's finding that she doesn't mean even half of what she says or does around Potter.

"So those glasses _aren't _just for show," she says, tart and tenuous.

He crosses his arms over his chest and stares at her, expression alternating quickly between a rather startling array of emotions—she catches confusion and resentment, exasperation and impatience and wistfulness, anxiety, concern, self-loathing, defeat, denial—

"You said five minutes," he eventually announces, cracking his knuckles with a brisk shake of his hand. "I waited ten. You're still half naked."

She is aware, all at once, of precisely how close he's standing to her; within reach, certainly, and with only a very few inches separating her bare skin from the heat of his body. She counts her heartbeats, glances at the slightly shredded ribbed collar of his t-shirt—it looks soft, old, as if it has gone through the wash one too many times and he's simply too stubborn to retire it. He has a deep, dark pink scar on his right forearm, waxy and puckered, roughly the size of her fist, and she wants to ask him how he got it, if it's left over from the war, if it ever still hurts and aches and tingles at the most inopportune of moments, like hers does.

"It's all for you, Potter," she manages to coo, curving her lips upwards, aiming for provocative and likely missing horribly—because she is unsettled, off-balance, and she knows that there are worse things in her world than being attracted to Potter, really, truly, she _does_—but she can't seem to think of any of them right now, can't seem to move past the bewildering inevitability of the next several seconds—

"Hoping for an encore?" he asks, tone difficult to interpret. "Thought you were the sort who was one and done, Parkinson—or were the rumors all wrong?"

She isn't sure how he expects her to respond; he strikes her as eager for a fight, for a distraction, and she's having trouble determining whether or not she wants to give him either.

"I imagine a great many of the rumors you've heard about me are wrong," she says coolly.

"Yeah?"

"Mm," she says, chewing the inside of her mouth as he looks at her legs—she stays still as his eyes skim over her knickers. His fingers twitch against the corded bulge of his bicep. Her breathing falters. "For example—you said, at the wedding, that I was famous for—what was it?—_below average blowies in the pantry_?"

He swallows roughly.

"Is that…erroneous?"

She licks her lips, feeling curiously empty. This is too easy. Theo had been easy. Potter isn't supposed to be.

"I could provide you with a demonstration, I suppose," she purrs, cocking her head to the side; he takes an aborted half-step forwards, as if operating wholly on instinct, and she knows that she's won. "So that you can make an informed decision."

His pupils are dilated as he reaches out, skimming the back of his hand across the bottom of her camisole, pausing at the hollow of her pelvis. The air between them, she is positive, has turned stiflingly, blisteringly hot. She's dizzy with it.

"But we're not in a pantry, Parkinson," he murmurs, dipping the callused tip of his thumb under the elastic lace waistband of her knickers. "Surely that negates the—ah—_scientific validity _of the experiment?"

She hums, flicking her tongue over the ridge of her teeth.

"Guess we'll have to do it twice, then," she replies, heart hammering as his fingernail just barely grazes the front of her cunt. "For—for science."

He presses himself closer, backing her up until her spine hits the polished walnut door of her wardrobe. His wrist is trapped inside of her underwear, and the heel of his palm is feather-light as it drags over her clit. She shudders, swaying forward; he doesn't bother catching her, lets her fall into his chest, and drops a proprietary hand on her hip to hold her in place.

"Already planning another round sounds an awful lot like a commitment," he says dryly—and if it had been anyone else saying those words to her, anyone at all, she might have thought that they were being playful. But it isn't anyone else, it's Potter, and he isn't ever playful with her. She knows better.

"Con—consider the source," she gasps, dragging her nails over the flat of his stomach; his fingers aren't moving against her cunt, aren't even really touching her at all as they push out against the fabric of her knickers—she's so fucking _aware _of them, though, so aware of how they hover and drift and gently, cleverly scrape at her skin, teasing at the possibility of plunging in and fucking her hard—

"The source," he echoes, and she's jolted back to reality as the hand on her hip tightens dangerously; she isn't, she realizes with an unpleasant start, in control any longer. "Meaning—what? You don't do commitment?"

Her head swims. Is she underwater? His fingers flutter against her cunt, distracting her, and she's wet, she's _dripping_, and her vision goes blurry as he crushes her clit beneath his palm, his _pulse_, and this is a game to him, it has to be, but she can't—she isn't—she _can't_—

She surges up.

She kisses him, open-mouthed and filthy, a little sloppy and a lot aggressive.

He melts.

She squirms, the pressure in her abdomen almost unbearable; she needs him to _do_ something—

He freezes.

"Parkinson—" he breathes out, and she hates the uncertainty in his voice.

"Yes or no, Potter," she whispers, toying with his belt buckle. She plucks at the brown leather strap; his cock is a hard line against the zipper of his jeans. "In—or—out."

He inhales sharply.

He grabs her hand.

He forces it away, and her body goes cold.

"We can't do this right now," he says quietly, removing his own hand from the front of her underwear. "I'm sorry, I wasn't—we have to—I wasn't thinking—Nott and Greengrass—"

He's floundering, bizarrely apologetic, and Pansy thinks, again, that if it was coming from anyone but Potter—literally, _anyone—_this awkward, muddled mess of a rejection might have been endearing.

It isn't, though.

It isn't endearing.

It's fucking mortifying.

"I had no idea you cared so much about Theo and Daphne's wellbeing," she says, yanking up her skirt and flouncing towards her closet. She's outwardly calm, can see it in the mirror as she turns away from him, and if it wasn't for the bone-deep, disconcerting lurch of her gut, she would have been convinced of her own indifference.

"Er—I don't?" Potter replies tentatively. "But you do, and—"

"Oh, so you're worried about _me_," she interjects as she swiftly scans rows and rows of white painted shelves for the most intimidating pair of shoes she owns.

"I don't know that _worried _is the most accurate term—"

She emerges from her closet wearing six-inch platform stilettos, bright magenta suede with black leather soles. A line of slate grey beads is sewn down the slender, pointed columns of the heels. Zabini had picked them out for her in Milan.

"Is that why you just had your hand in my knickers?" she asks crudely. "Because you were _worried_?"

He sputters with indignation.

"What are you—_no_!" he exclaims. "You can't just—you _seduced me—_"

"I didn't _seduce you_," she insists, even though she kind of had. "You just—_barged in _while I was changing—"

"You said five minutes!" he shouts, waving his arm. "Excuse me for wanting to _check on you—_"

"Oh, _please_, like you had _any _rational reason for charging inside like an idiot bloody Gryffindor—"

"—thought you were fucking _upset, _sorry if my assumption that you were capable of having an actual _emotion_ is so bloody offensive—"

"—fucking _savior _complex, God, I don't need to be _rescued_—"

"—wasn't trying to _rescue you_, I was trying to be a _decent human being—_"

"—ridiculous double standards, not my fucking fault you think sex is fucking _sacred_—"

"—but obviously that's something you're not _familiar with_, no surprises there—"

"—and I don't _want you _here at all!"

She clamps her mouth shut.

He scowls at the floor.

She takes a savage sort of satisfaction in the fact that his erection hasn't gone down—he didn't get to come, he's still deliciously, delightfully hard for her—and she hopes, viciously, that the zipper of his jeans is _particularly _unforgiving.

"You have a plan, then?" she asks, shattering their stalemate. "I don't want to contact the Ministry. We've no idea who's behind this, and Daphne is pregnant. We shouldn't—risk anything. I'd just pay the ransom—or the blackmail—but I doubt that's what this _person _is actually after. They made it personal. They don't care about the money."

He clenches his jaw.

"Oh, now it's _we_, is it?" he replies with an acidic sneer. "Now that they've kidnapped your cheating arse of an ex?"

She's careful to keep her expression blank; it isn't difficult, and she can tell that it annoys him.

"Yes," she says. "Now it's _we_. Theo deserves quite a lot of things for what he—for how it—for what happened between us, but _this_ certainly isn't one of them. So—plan. What is it."

Potter glances up at her, and she feels skewered by the intensity of his glare.

"Well, considering you seem to have some weird bloody Slytherin insight into how this is all unfolding—"

"Common sense is now _weird bloody Slytherin insight_?" she interrupts, mocking and defensive.

He closes his eyes, nostrils flaring as he exhales.

"Will you just—God, this is a fucking nightmare," he growls. "Look, Parkinson—this isn't just about an embarrassing picture being leaked to the _Prophet_ anymore. The stakes are higher. I never liked Nott, and I've never even met Greengrass, but they're probably innocent—"

"_Probably innocent_?" Pansy bleats. "Are you—what, _exactly_, are you insinuating, Potter?"

"_Nothing_," he replies, obstinate. "Nothing. It's just…well, it's _odd_, isn't it? That _they_ would be used against you like this? As far as anyone knows, you don't talk to either of them, and you and Nott—I mean, it isn't a secret how _that_ ended. Besides, they're—"

She lifts her chin.

"They're Slytherins," she finishes for him, refusing to acknowledge the sinking sensation in her stomach; Draco would be appalled if he could see how inexplicably fragile long-term exposure to Potter could make her. "They're automatically untrustworthy."

For the first time that day—or in recent memory, truly—Potter looks conflicted. It occurs to her that he might think he's hurt her feelings. She almost laughs.

"You have to admit that it's suspicious," he begins to argue. "In auror training, they emphasized that it's rarely ever a stranger—"

"Your _auror training _lasted three months," she snaps. "And then you flunked out. Or quit. Who really knows? All I've heard are _rumors_."

His face darkens with anger; a direct hit, then, she thinks grimly.

"Just because you don't want to believe that your precious fucking _Theo _could possibly be trying to _extort you—_"

"_Stop_," she says, abruptly furious; and her mask falls. Her rage is explosive, arresting, consuming. She decides that it must have always been there, hunting and hating and waiting to strike—because she can't find the source of it, can't find the leak, can't figure out how she got there, and all she knows—all she can think—is that it's Potter's fault. It must be. "Theo had nothing to do with this. You don't know him. He wouldn't—he knows how this would affect me, and he wouldn't do that. It's someone else."

"How this would _affect _you?" Potter demands, incredulous. "Because I'm sure he took your feelings into account when he fucking _cheated _on you, yeah, sounds like a real stand-up bloke."

She bites down on her tongue until she tastes blood.

"You continue bringing that up like it has _anything _to do with our current problem," she hisses. "It doesn't. Theo has been my _friend _since I was eleven years old. I don't know how things work in Gryffindor—from what I gather, it's just a lot of chanting and butterbeer and abject fucking idiocy—but in Slytherin, you don't just _forget _about the people you grew up with. You _don't._"

Potter blinks, features rippling with surprise.

"I didn't mean—"

"Yes," she says loudly. "You _did_ mean."

His teeth clack as he presses his lips together.

She glowers at her window.

A far-off car alarm goes off, blaring and high-pitched.

"We should send an owl to Hermione and Malfoy," he finally says. "Hermione won't be happy if she gets back from Paris and discovers we kept this from her. She'll want to help."

"No."

"Parkinson—"

Pansy cuts him off with a venomous stare.

"_No_, Potter," she says again, emphatic. "Draco deserves a week of not having to take care of me and my shit—and I imagine that Granger could use a well-deserved break from yours, too. We can handle this ourselves. You defeated fucking Voldemort, and I—well. This is…easy to deal with. Comparatively."

The slant of his eyebrows is skeptical.

"What were you going to say just then?" he asks.

She considers feigning ignorance, but she gets the impression that he doesn't actually expect her to answer him.

"I was going to say that I survived," she replies simply. "You defeated fucking Voldemort, and I—survived. Are we going to Creevey's now?"

He hesitates, apparently nonplussed by the subject change.

"You want to track down the blackmailer," he says slowly. "And—what? Rescue Nott? Not really your specialty, is it?"

"No," she concedes. "I'm not really cut out for all of that. But _you_ are. And you have to know that whoever's doing this to us is mostly after me—that picture you're so terrified might get back to the She-Weasel is as good as published in the _Prophet_ if you pretend you didn't see the ransom note."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Yes, it does," she says, turning to pick up a beige python clutch off the corner of her bedside table. "You fucked me at the wedding. You got caught. The blackmailer thinks you're on my side, and wants to punish you for it, which is the whole point of the picture."

"And what's the _whole point _of taking Nott and Greengrass?" he asks, sounding perturbed.

She pauses—because that's the question that's been niggling at the back of her mind since she'd opened the bloody envelope. If the blackmailer had only wanted to hurt _her_, they would have just killed Theo; they wouldn't have bothered with a kidnapping, with snatching Daphne, with taunting Pansy about the pregnancy. They would have gone after Draco, after Granger—they wouldn't have included Potter and that silly fucking photograph at all.

"I don't know," she admits. She doesn't say anything else; she doesn't want to share her thoughts with him. "But we should go. If your little friend can tell us where the pictures came from, we might be able to figure out who sent them. Motive doesn't matter right now."

He moves towards her bedroom door, eyes lingering on her legs.

"Motive always matters," he remarks flatly.

She grabs his elbow.

He stops walking.

"I agree," she says, unsure why it's suddenly so important to her that he knows that.

The skin around his mouth pinches in a frown.

He shrugs her hand off.

"Creevey lives in Bristol," he mutters. "And I'm too hungover to Apparate. We'll have to take the train."

She grimaces.

"Muggle transportation," she sighs, following him down the stairs. "Fucking wonderful."

###


	5. a proclamation

**Greenwich Mean Time**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**five:**

_a proclamation_

###

_**April 22, 2001**_

_**1:30 pm**_

Potter pays for their train tickets with a sleek silver credit card, and the cashier—pretty, young, red-haired—flushes when he offers her a distracted smile. Pansy has to bite back an unkind comment about the She-Weasel; Potter would have a self-righteous Gryffindor fit, she's certain, and she still feels strangely…_drained_ from their earlier argument. It isn't really worth it. She guesses that they'll soon find something more interesting to fight about, anyway.

"We have seven minutes," he says, leading her to a narrow bank of uncomfortable looking plastic chairs.

She perches daintily on the very edge of her seat.

"Seven whole minutes? _However_ shall we entertain ourselves?" she drawls, picking at her fingernails.

He looks at her legs—_again_. She feels a grim sort of amusement at his woeful lack of subtlety.

"We could strategize," he suggests, tilting his head back; a faint smattering of coarse black stubble shades the skin beneath his chin, stopping halfway down his neck.

She crosses her legs at the knee, feeling twitchy. An enormous 'NO SMOKING' sign takes up half of the far station wall, and she sneers as she studies it. Fucking typical.

"What is there to strategize?" she asks with practiced, perfunctory indifference.

He sighs.

"Really, Parkinson?"

"We already have a plan," she replies, somewhat shortly. What did muggles have against smoking? "We're going to visit this Creevey fellow in bloody Bristol, we're going to show him the photograph you were sent, and we're going to see if he can tell us anything about where it was developed. That's our fucking strategy. We can reevaluate our—_options_—later tonight."

He sits up straight in his chair.

"We're going to show him _both _photographs," he corrects. "What if they're different? What if they're not even from the same person?"

She bristles.

"I think we both know the odds of that are _miniscule_—there's absolutely no need to inform the fucking masses that Theo has been kidnapped."

He narrows his eyes, and they glint a deep, emerald green in the overhead fluorescent light.

"_Inform the fucking masses_," he says, tone turning acidic. "Because that's the first thing Colin would do, is it?"

She purses her lips, tugging at the strap of her camisole. The silk is oddly scratchy against her bare shoulder. She absently wonders if she remembered to replace the empty pack of cigarettes in her bag.

"I don't know. I don't know him. I don't _trust him_."

He clenches his jaw.

"Well, _I_ do. He's trustworthy. God, he fought a bloody _war_ with me, which is more than I can say for—"

"Oh, look, the train's here," she interjects, voice pointedly, deliberately even; she doesn't want him to finish his sentence—she knows what he thinks of her, of her old friends, of her past. It isn't flattering.

He massages his forehead.

"Yeah," he mutters. "Let's go, then."

They board the train under a veil of thick, heavy silence. She follows him into an unoccupied compartment and makes sure to take the seat closest to the door.

"So—let me get this straight," he says, sitting down across from her and tapping his fingers against his thigh; she notices that his jeans are awfully snug. She can't imagine that he's comfortable. "You're willing to show Colin a picture of the two of us…"

"Fucking," she supplies, sweetly saccharine.

His gaze sharpens.

"_Fucking,_" he says, enunciating slowly, as if he's tasting the word. "Yeah. That. So—you're willing to show Colin a picture of us—doing that, but a picture of your cheating ex-boyfriend in mortal danger is too—what? Too _personal_?"

She feels a surge of blistering hot anger flare to life in the pit of her stomach, sudden and swift. Saliva floods her mouth—she's positively fucking _itching_ for a cigarette now.

"_Do_ stop bringing up the cheating thing, Potter—it makes you sound petty. Or maybe—maybe it's more _personal _than that—something you want to share about what _really _happened with the She-Weasel?"

His entire body tenses.

"Fuck you," he snaps.

"In public?" she gasps mockingly. "_Dirty_ boy."

He drags a hand through his hair; the motion is jerky, almost violent, and she thinks she might have hit a nerve, which is—unbelievable. Had Potter actually cheated on the She-Weasel? Is that what had gone wrong? Abstractly, Pansy knows that he's more than capable of such a thing—he's a man, and he's a bit of a bastard, and she can recognize the signs of deeply buried, deeply ingrained self-loathing when she sees them; she has a mirror, after all. But the idea of Potter _cheating_—it's ludicrous. He's nothing like Theo. He's nothing like _anyone_. He's always been in a class of his own, a stand-out, somehow separate from the rest of the world; he wouldn't cheat, she's sure of it. He and his merry band of heroes are loyal to a bloody fault.

"You're fucking—never mind. I'll be back," he says curtly, edging past her to reach for the door handle. His jeans brush against her knees as he pauses, seemingly for no reason; she forces herself to look at his belt—distressed brown leather, scuffed and soft.

He doesn't look at her.

The moment passes.

He moves away again.

She doesn't ask where he's going, and he doesn't volunteer the information.

The door slides shut behind him with a quiet, anticlimactic snick of cheap plywood and rubber, and she immediately reaches for her bag. She rummages around for a while before producing a flattened, misshapen cardboard cigarette box.

She huffs.

It's empty.

Of course it's fucking empty.

###

_**2:15 pm**_

When he finally returns, she's reclining lengthwise along the sticky leather train bench, eyes closed and face dappled with fractured streams of sunlight; she'd opened the blinds of the small compartment window in his absence, and her skin feels pleasantly warm.

"Here," he says, tossing something at her lap.

She squints at him.

"What?"

He makes a vague, slightly embarrassed motion with his arm and slouches in the seat farthest away from her.

"Sandwich," he explains, voice tight. "I woke you up this morning, and I know you haven't eaten anything."

Her eyebrows fly upwards, practically to her hairline. She eyes the sandwich with something she doesn't want to admit is suspicion—it's on spongy white bread, wrapped in cellophane, and has a cheerful, spring-green sticker plastered haphazardly along its front. She's dumbfounded. They aren't friends. They aren't—anything. She can't tell if this is an apology—which she can privately admit she doesn't deserve—or a clever ploy to get her to lower her defenses. She knows which one it would be if the sandwich had come from _her_, but Potter could be so frightfully fucking _noble_ sometimes; she can't discount the possibility that he's simply being…nice. Like a Gryffindor. How _tedious_.

"You bought me a sandwich," she says, deadpan.

He fidgets. A honey yellow packet of crisps crinkles between his fingers.

"Figured you were probably hungry," he replies, spreading his legs.

She sits up and tugs her skirt over her thighs.

"Did you?" she asks, feigning disinterest. She feels—out of sorts. _Unsettled. _She dislikes it. No. She dislikes _him._

He sniffs.

"Yeah."

She plucks at the cellophane wrapper of the sandwich.

"You bought me a sandwich," she says again, bemused.

He tears open his crisp packet with a quick flick of his wrist; she can appreciate the way the muscles in his forearms flex and shift and stretch as he does it. She scowls at the thought.

"It's just a sandwich," he replies with a shrug.

She watches him skeptically. He isn't eating his crisps.

"Of course," she concedes. She decides that if she waits long enough he'll probably crack; Gryffindors aren't a patient lot.

He licks his lips.

She makes an elaborate show of inspecting the sandwich—she sees wilting red-leaf lettuce and a smear of whole-grain mustard.

He clears his throat.

She swings her ankles, sky-high magenta stilettos catching on the industrial grey carpet.

He coughs.

She hums.

He restlessly jiggles his foot.

"You're just—you're really skinny," he blurts out.

She stiffens.

"I'm the same size as Granger," she says, straining to keep her face blank.

The corners of his mouth turn down, and—

She thinks about all the looks he's given her—heated and irate and wary and _liquid_, mesmerizing, magnetic—and she thinks about how he'd seen her naked earlier, how he'd stared and stammered and then, ultimately, _rejected_ her—

"Hermione's got to be three or four inches shorter than you," he says.

She doesn't flinch. She refuses to. He knows fucking _nothing_ about her, least of all how bloody tall she is.

"Is this an intervention?" she asks, lifting her chin. "For my non-existent eating disorder? Bit crass, isn't it, to do it somewhere I can't escape?"

He wrinkles his nose.

"What? What are you—no, I just—you didn't eat breakfast," he tries. "And I didn't—I don't think you have a fucking _eating disorder_, Christ, I just…_noticed _that you'd—gotten thin. _Thinner_, I mean. Too thin. I didn't—it's just a fucking sandwich."

She grits her teeth so hard that she faintly hears the enamel squeak.

"_Too thin_," she repeats, carefully concealing her fury. "Is that your expert medical opinion, Potter, or are you comparing me to someone specific?"

He blanches, and she feels a savage stab of satisfaction twist inside her chest. She wants him just as off-balance, just as _disoriented _as she is. He deserves it.

"Comparing—_what_?"

She tosses the sandwich onto the bench next to her and leans forward; his eyes flick to the neckline of her camisole, to the exposed tops of her breasts, and she almost smirks. A dull red flush creeps across his neck. She thinks he might start to get angry soon. Which is—good. He's impulsive when he's upset, and highly, distressingly observant when he isn't; she far prefers the former.

"You said I was _too thin_," she simpers, twirling a loose strand of hair around her finger. "At what point would I be _just thin enough_, Harry?"

He startles at the sound of his first name.

"I didn't mean—there isn't—I wasn't comparing you to anyone," he says.

"Oh?" she all but coos, masking her derision with a smile. "Just personal preference, then?"

He shifts in his seat, brow furrowed with what she assumes is irritation.

"You should be more direct if you're fishing for compliments," he says tersely.

She pouts.

"I normally don't have to _fish_ for _anything_," she returns, lowering her shoulders and pushing her breasts together; the move is calculated—he can't see much of anything, she knows that, but his gaze still darkens as she traces the line of her cleavage with the tip of her finger, and she feels—triumphant. It isn't as fulfilling as she expected it to be.

"You're such a bloody—" he breaks off. He tugs at the fringe of hair falling across his forehead. "What is your _problem_, Parkinson? With me, I mean?"

Her lips part in disbelief; surely he isn't _serious_.

"I—" she begins, but then stops. It's _Potter_. Of course he's serious, and earnest, and probably incredibly fucking offended by her reluctance to praise him, indiscriminately, for—what, exactly? Bringing her a sandwich? Deigning to shag her in the bathroom at Granger's wedding? Saving the world? "I don't understand the question."

He scoffs, and she thinks the sound is strangely bitter, coming from him.

"Classic Slytherin deflection," he mutters, not making any attempt to hide his disdain.

She scrunches her nose up before remembering, belatedly, that that is her least attractive facial expression.

"As opposed to—_what_? Classic Gryffindor grudge holding?" she retorts, quickly standing in the low-ceilinged compartment; she needs to be taller than him for this conversation. She needs to—they've never been on equal footing, not truly, not _ever_, and she needs to change that.

He glares up at her, lip curled.

"At least I've got a bloody good fucking reason to hold a grudge," he snarls. "What have you got? An empty mansion, a too-full bed, and not a single fucking friend left willing to be seen with you in public. Even Malfoy didn't want you coming to Friday dinners—Hermione had to convince him. Didn't know that, did you?"

She swallows, and then she swallows again, and then she feels the muscles around her mouth do something reflexively—tighten, maybe, but she can't be bothered to check, no, not when his words are fucking _ringing _in her ears, sour and scathing, and her stomach is clenching and her heart is pounding and she can't breathe, she doesn't want to breathe, she wants this moment to last and last and _last _because she knows, from experience, that once her shock wears off it will all only get worse—

"Your _good fucking reason_ is in the past, Potter," she spits out. "Just like everything else you care about. Dead parents, dead godfather, dead Dumbledore—and an ex-girlfriend who ran away from you as fast and as far as she bloody could after you proposed to her. But none of that's _your_ fault, right? It's always someone else's."

His pupils dilate as he meets her eyes, chest heaving and rage palpable—and she thinks that her anguish must be undetectable, no, _invisible_, because he is _furious,_ not sorry, and if he sensed even a _fraction_ of her inner turmoil, his conscience—that thing she both detests and envies in equal measure—would have already made him apologize, made him _leave_—

And that is unacceptable.

_She_ will be the one to walk away from this. From him.

_She_ will be the one to make him sorry.

"We took a vote, you know," he finally says, pushing his glasses back up his nose; the gesture is unnecessarily aggressive. "About Friday dinners. No one wanted you there except Hermione. Zabini even tried to vote twice against having you around—Malfoy pretended not to notice."

She snorts out a humorless laugh, and the skin between his eyebrows puckers in surprise; he's quite obviously disconcerted_, _and she thinks, not for the first time, that it's a bloody miracle he's still alive if he's this transparent to everyone.

"A _vote_," she says mockingly. "How _democratic_."

He studies her for a second too long.

Her scalp prickles.

Without warning, he gets to his feet just as the train sways into a bend in the tracks. He stumbles, arms flailing, and his hands smack her shoulders; almost immediately, the train rights itself, and he grabs onto her, holding himself up.

She releases an involuntary gasp at the contact.

Because—

He's too close. The compartment is too small. Her breasts are pressed against his chest, and his mouth is _right there_, lips parted and tongue wet, and his anger—explosive and irrational and impetuous and such an excellent fucking _distraction _from the blunt, bludgeoning truth of what he'd said to her—has transformed, mutated, turned into something else, and she feels raw, she feels empty, she feels the calluses on his palms and the spearmint on his breath and the weight of his uncharacteristically calm appraisal—

She has emotional whiplash. She wonders if it's the same for him, if he finds himself slipping and sliding from one extreme to another whenever they're together. She suspects he might. She doesn't know what that means to her.

"Let go of me," she hisses, jerking back.

His grip tightens.

"Don't think I will," he says, tone icy.

She considers shoving him away—_hard_, she'd push him _hard_—but she isn't Granger. She isn't a Gryffindor. He's expecting her to respond violently, she's sure; he's expecting her to stomp her heel onto his toes, to drive her knee into his groin, to wrench herself out of his grasp and draw her wand. That's what anyone else would do.

His nails dig into her skin, as if he's anticipating a sudden movement.

Her resentment—roaring and cold and fierce, like a blizzard, like an _avalanche_—swells in the back of her throat.

He thinks he can _intimidate _her, does he?

"Well," she says, softening her voice, relaxing her posture, curling her finger into one of his belt loops and looking up at him through the fringe of her lashes, "I suppose if you won't let go on your own, I'll just have to make it worth your while to, won't I?"

Confusion clouds his features.

"What? What are you—"

She reaches up, shushing him with a playful wave of her hand. His lips catch on the pad of her thumb, and she shivers. His expression falters.

"Tell you what, Potter," she murmurs. "If you agree to let me go, right now…"

His tongue darts out.

"If I agree?" he prompts.

She drags her fingers across his chin, down his throat, over the smooth planes of his chest and the subtle ridges of his abdomen—she feels him inhale sharply when her hand stops at the low-slung waist of his jeans.

"You agree to let me go, and I'll…" she trails off, shyly nibbling on her lower lip.

His eyes are a hazy forest green.

"You'll…?" he manages.

She shifts her body so that her hips are snug against his, and then leans forward, mouth grazing the shell of his ear as she speaks.

"You agree to let me go, Potter," she whispers, dipping her fingertips into the hollow of his pelvis. "And I'll suck your cock."

His reaction is instantaneous.

"_What_—" he yelps, lurching backwards and grimacing as he drops his hands from her shoulders.

She can't help herself; she sniggers meanly, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest as she leans into the wall.

"I swear, Potter, if I didn't know for a _fact_ that you aren't a virgin—"

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he demands, clearly outraged. "You've got a bloody wand and you aren't half bad with it, I've seen you, you don't have to trade—"

"Oh, you thought I was _serious_?" she interjects with a condescending lilt to her voice. "How precious."

He glowers as she saunters over to the compartment's sliding door; she's leaving, she decides abruptly. She needs a fucking cigarette. It's imperative to her health.

"You tricked me," he says, voice neutral.

"And here I thought I'd have to spell it out for you."

The angle of his jaw is mutinous as he moves towards her again.

"Look, Parkinson—"

"No," she says, suddenly harsh; her knuckles are white as she holds onto the frame of the door. "Don't touch me again. And don't follow me, either. We're an hour out from Bristol, and we're going to finish this business with Creevey and the blackmailer and Theo and after that—I swear to God, Potter, if I _never _have to fucking talk to you again, it'll be too bloody soon."

He turns on his heel and collapses into the seat that she'd previously been using; the sight makes her flinch, for whatever absurd reason, and she has to force herself to stay still.

"Won't be sucking my cock today, then, I take it?" he sneers.

She goes quiet for a minute, relishing the faint hint of red she can see blooming across his cheeks; he can't play her game, he has to know that, and still—_still _he keeps trying. If it wasn't so fucking stupid of him, she'd almost be impressed by his resilience.

"No," she replies with a smug curl of her lips. "I won't. You're welcome to try again tomorrow, though. Us Slytherins can be so damnably _fickle, _can't we? Can't really trust a thing that comes out of our mouths." She pauses, and then chuckles. "Although—you're probably much more interested in what's going _in_ my mouth, aren't you, Potter?"

His nostrils flare, and he glances down; she follows his gaze, quirking an eyebrow when she sees how intently he's staring at the sandwich he'd bought her. She'd nearly forgotten about it.

"I don't understand you," he eventually says, poking at the edge of the sandwich bread through its clear cellophane wrapper; the crust crumbles. He frowns.

"No," she agrees, disinterestedly. "You most certainly don't."

He takes off his glasses and squeezes his eyes shut. He looks frustrated.

"What if—what if I said I wanted to?"

She scoffs and yanks at the door handle.

"I'd call you a liar."

He glares.

"That's not fair. You don't even—"

"You know what else isn't fair, Potter?" she interrupts pleasantly. "Draco letting Blaise vote twice and none of you fine, upstanding young Gryffindors bothering to intervene. So—piss off. I'm going to go find a cigarette."

He winces.

"Wait," he calls out as she steps into the train corridor. "Parkinson—"

She doesn't wait.

###

**Author's Note**: I apologize for the lateness of this update—it was done yesterday, but I couldn't decide if I wanted to include the originally planned second half, so I waited to post this until I was sure. Chapter Six won't take nearly as long to get up, though; most of it is already written, since most of it was, in fact, meant to be in this chapter, but it was getting out of control long and pretty discordant, so…I'll probably take a week or so to finish it up.

Quick note about Harry and Pansy's current relationship in the story—if you were thinking that they're actually becoming _more _hostile to one another as the narrative progresses, you were absolutely correct. They are. Things are going to reach their inevitable collective breaking point soon—starting in the next chapter, actually—but the combative dynamic that presently exists between the two of them isn't really going to go anywhere.

I've also had some people ask about whether or not this fic will have a happy ending—and without divulging spoilers, I feel okay telling you guys that yes, this story has a happy ending. It's already written. I might tweak it a bit at some point, but the result will ultimately be the same.

Anyway.

Hope you all had happy holidays!

xoxo

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